As a 5000 hour plus pilot flying pretty much continuously since 1986 flying seems to come easy to me. However, I never take that for granted and still use abbreviated checklists, call outs mostly on landing particularly approach speeds, and gear down. Night time flying for me has not my favorite thing to do since I live in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Last year I did want to do some night flying (solo of course) so I asked a local CFI and former 757 pilot to come fly my 201 during the evening hours. But I asked him to be the PIC in command instead of me, just to see how he does things differently from me. What an experience. It was incredible to monitor the differences on how he fly's it and myself. Even small things like slight heading changes, pitch adjustments, etc. I even asked him to speak out loud on what he is thinking about while flying the plane, how he adjusts the heading corrections necessary to fly straight. And all this while night flying and of course without the AP.. When the flight was over, I dropped him off and then flew for an hour solo that night. I recommend you trying that sometime with your flight instructor. It's amazing the little things (hopefully not major corrections) you can learn from this one flight. Every pilot can learn from others flying techniques and this is a great way to do it.